A/N: Oh noes, Kirsain has aaangst. Don't worry, Roddy will hit him if he gets too mopey. Enjoy chapter 4! Also no, I don't own pokemon, geez. Quit asking, you guys.

Just kidding. But seriously, I don't own it.

CHAPTER FOUR

"Kirsain?"

Oog. He hurt. Everything hurt, even the too-bright light against his closed eyelids.

"Kirsain."

Maybe if he lay really really still the voice would go away and let him sleep for a million years. Yeah. That sounded good.

"Kirsain. Look at me."

Was that voice familiar...?

"You're stronger than this, Kee. Look at me."

Kee...that wasn't his name. No-one called him that, not in a long time. The only one who had was...

"Mum?" he breathed, not daring to look, in case he didn't see anything.

"Come on, Kee...that's it...open your eyes..."

"Mum!" Kirsain shouted and surged forward, yelping as unseen, slippery things tangled his limbs and he lost balance, crashing to the -

"Oof!" Roddy gasped as Kirsain plowed into him. "Hey! You're not dead!"

"Roddy? Wha – where am I?"

Past memories finally seeped through, before Roddy had a chance to reply.

"The Lab! Team Shadow! What happened?!"

"I'm glad to see you too," Roddy grumbled, shoving Kirsain off him. "It's not good news, though. I don't know what happened in there exactly, but a whole bunch of pokemon belonging to other trainers that Oak was storing here were stolen, plus a bunch of starting pokemon. The whole region's going nuts."

"Oh..." Kirsain looked down, ashamed. It was his fault...he should have been able to stop them, somehow. He could have -

"Don't start."

"Huh?"

"Just don't. You're thinking," here Roddy put on a ridiculously high voice, "'Oh, if only I could have stopped them with my level five pokemon against their high-level ones that could and probably did wipe the floor with me!' Am I right?"

"...Maybe. And I don't sound like that. Did – did they take-"

"Yours are fine," Roddy said, handing over two pokeballs to a relieved Kirsain. "Guess they had other things on their mind. Now, are you going to obsess over this and do I need to make fun of you for it until you realise that it wasn't your fault and you couldn't have prevented it?"

"Don't, Roddy. Just...not now. Please." Kirsain couldn't just ignore that possibly hundreds of people's pokemon had been stolen and he could have stopped it instead of being whacked unconscious by something he'd heard coming at him in the darkness too late, but at the moment he really didn't want to deal with the inevitable teasing. A subject change sounded good round about now.

"Where's Rob?"

"Oh, he went ahead on his Pidgeot to Saffron City to visit his parents, he'll meet us in Viridian in a few days. And check this out!" Roddy pulled two strange little machines from his pocket, handing one over to Kirsain with perhaps a little more dramatic flair than necessary and waving his own one in his friend's face. "Our own Pokegears!"

"Wow, cool," Kirsain said, taking his and flipping it open. "I thought you could only get these in Johto?"

Roddy shrugged. "Tell that to Professor Oak, he was handing them out while you were out of it."

"Hang on, are these free?" Kirsain had brought money with him, obviously, but he hadn't expected something like this to be handed to him free of charge.

"Professor Oak didn't say anything about it, and I didn't ask. We won't get the radio attachment until we hit Lavender, but the phone and map are pretty useful."

"Mm," Kirsain replied, already adding his Dad's number to the phone's list. He should probably call at some point, in case news of the robbery reached Heksar and Dad got worried.

"Shall we get going then?"

"In a bit," said Kirsain, swinging his legs off the bed and standing up. "I want to talk to Professor Oak. Apologise. Say what I saw in there."

"What did happen, anyway? The police have been in here a few times asking for you as a witness."

Kirsain groaned. He hadn't been counting on that. Part of him just wanted to sneak out and go on his journey like he'd wanted to all his life, but something big could be happening. Unoriginal name aside, Team Shadow could be a serious threat, and Kirsain wasn't just going to run away.

"I'll probably have to say it several times today anyway, so you'll hear it then. I'm probably going to get sick of it in a few hours."

"I'm sure you will," Roddy said, rolling his eyes and following Kirsain out of the room.

TBC...

Chapter five ultra-secret sneak preview!

"That was so cool," said Roddy. " I can't believe we met Batman."

"I can't believe that Batman is secretly a Transformer," Kirsain replied. "I mean, how can you be Batman and a giant transforming space robot? It doesn't make sense!"

"No, but it was very cool to watch."

"It sure was nice of him to buy us ice cream after he stepped on that doomsday device for us," Rob added, so the audience would remember that he still existed. They all agreed it had been an excellent day.

Okay, so maybe that doesn't happen. Or maybe it does! Who knows?